About a week ago, I posted about Mr Milan Tomasevic and how Justice Bell thought the judge below had not been solicitous enough to him. A reader of this blog has filled me in on Mr Tomasevic’s form. One of his early cases, Zegarac v Tomasevic [2003] VSC 150, was a Part IX adjustment of property rights claim by his former defacto spouse Slavica Zegarac, and is a good example of the challenges presented by two litigants in person. Subsequently, Slavica Zegarac has got a taste for the game by suing her solicitor: see Zegarac v PD [2005] VSC 264, and then resisting the solicitor’s suit for her bankruptcy, all the way to the High Court: Zegarac v PD [2007] HCATrans 526 where her special leave application was over in less than 2 minutes.
Justice Brereton’s latest professional negligence decision: failure to warn punter of commercial improvidence
Update, 5 December 2007: Thank goodness. Someone has read the case and done a little note for us all. Nigel Watson’s crew over at Tress Cox, in fact. Here it is. It says, in part:
‘it was or ought to have been plain to the solicitor that the plaintiffs were putting their family home at risk in order to raise the funds for an investment in which they had unrealistic expectations which were objectively absurd and in practice involved an extremely high risk. It was insufficient for the solicitor to advise the plaintiff that they limited their retainer on advising on a proposed investment. The solicitor should not have requested that the plaintiffs seek and obtain legal and financial advice elsewhere in respect of this component of the transaction and yet still continued to act on and facilitate the loan transaction. It should have also been evident to the solicitor that the plaintiffs did not appreciate the importance of obtaining such advice and did not intend to get the relevant advice. The Judge stated “what was required was advice that firmly brought home the apparent improvidence of the proposed investment.”’
Original post: Justice Brereton has put out another long professional negligence decision in a solicitor’s liability case: Riz v Perpetual Trustee Australia Ltd [2007] NSWSC 1153. Must say I haven’t read it, and I hesitate to make promises by adding “yet”. But it seems to be about the failure of a solicitor to warn her clients against going into a scam involving — no kidding — shopping trolleys. The solicitors had formerly acted for the scammer. Their job was to give the familiar independent advice on loan and mortgage documents. The clients were Lebanese immigrants and had poor English. This was one of those cases where an attempt to limit the solicitors’ obligations to warn against really improvident transactions did not work, probably because the whiff of a conflict of duties hung in the air.
Legal Practice List guru to give VCAT seminar
There’s a seminar coming up in exactly a week’s time at the Law Institute at which Alan Hebb is going to speak on disputes in VCAT’s Legal Practice List. He’s a good bloke and has more experience there than anyone else. He was very often briefed as Counsel Assisting the Tribunal, both at the Legal Profession Tribunal and at VCAT. Speaking generally, ‘Counsel Assisting’ are generally cast in the role of prosecutors. It is usually an office associated with disciplinary prosecutions and royal commissions. Though the old Tribunal, and now VCAT have important disciplinary jurisdictions, this was not Alan Hebb’s role.
Until very recently, when the practice was — so I hear — abandoned, Counsel Assisting were briefed by Legal Practitioners Assisting the old Tribunal, and then by Legal Practitioners Assisting VCAT’s Legal Practice List, to take otherwise unrepresented claimants through their evidence and cross-examine lawyers in professional negligence claims under the Legal Practice Act, 1996 and then the Legal Profession Act, 2004. They did not act for the claimants though, and were proscribed by the terms of their brief from giving legal advice. I hear too that the Legal Practitioners Assisting the Legal Practice List are no longer employed in that capacity.
One might think these two developments to be a terrible thing which has quietly slipped under the radar. In the case of the office of Counsel Assisting, I am not so sure, not because of any deficiency in those who held the office, who did a very diligent job fairly in often difficult circumstances, but because of what I perceive, at least in some cases, to be a structural difficulty with the whole concept of ‘counsel assisting’ a civil tribunal hearing a private civil dispute. I think it comes down to this: if the aim was to even up the playing field between unrepresented claimants and solicitors, perhaps what needs to happen is to simply pay for a barrister to appear for the claimant. That may be politically impossible, and would amount to an ad hoc form of legal aid. Here’s why I think that, based on years of experience. Continue reading “Legal Practice List guru to give VCAT seminar”
Julian Burnside, his book and his take on the Peter Faris affair
Julian Burnside QC is one of 4 Victorians whom I know to have had Wikipedia entries as barristers. The others are Mark Dreyfus QC, Lex Lasry QC, and Peter Faris QC. (Are there any others?) Julian Burnside has become a writer, Mark Dreyfus a federal politician, and Lex Lasry a judge of the Supreme Court. All but Peter Faris were in Latham Chambers with me.
Now Julian Burnside has written a new book, Watching Brief. Here’s an extract published in The Age. I almost bought it in the bookshop today, but then I thought of all the other books I have to read, and I’d just bought The Legal Mystique (1982, Angus & Robertson) by Michael Sexton and Laurence Maher (‘drugs’ is not an entry in the index) to add to my collection of books about the legal profession. The collection’s coming along nicely since yet another legend of Latham Chambers, Jeff Sher, gave me a little manila-covered book by W.W. Boulton, B.A., Secretary to the General Council of the [English] Bar, published by Butterworths in London in 1971: Conduct and Ettiquette at the Bar. And a friend of mine has promised to permanently lend me Gifford’s Legal Profession; Law and Practice in Victoria. I figured I’d probably buy and read Andrew Fraser’s memoirs before Julian’s latest. But I might change my mind about that, because I imagine Fraser’s is the more interesting, but Burnside’s the better written. In fact, I suspect the writing in Burnside’s is to die for.
Because of the book, he’s on the media circuit. Here’s his interview with Monica Attard. His reference to a ‘marijuana cigarette’ brings to mind by far the most interesting contribution to the Peter Faris debate, which was the Law Institute’s President’s quip to the press that most barristers wouldn’t even know what cocaine is. But Monica, I’m not at all sure that the Bar is investigating whether Mr Faris is a fit and proper person to be a barrister; where did you get that from? Continue reading “Julian Burnside, his book and his take on the Peter Faris affair”
Danger lurks in settling a disciplinary complaint against a lawyer
A man hired a firm. Then he hired a new solicitor. He had not paid the fees of counsel retained by the first firm, for which the first firm was responsible for paying to the barrister. The first firm handed over its files to the new solicitor upon receiving an undertaking from the second solicitor that he would pay the counsel’s fees. The new solicitor failed to do so. So the first firm (i) sued him in a court for what amounted to specific performance of the undertaking, and (ii) complained about the failure to meet the undertaking to the NSW Law Society (this was back in 2001). Nine months later, the Society charged the new solicitor with professional misconduct.
The hearing of the court case was listed for 17 January 2002. The new solicitor who was the respondent to the disciplinary charge hired a barrister to represent him at the trial of the civil court case. Through that barrister, the new solicitor negotiated a settlement with the first firm a day or two before the trial. The terms of that settlement got the barrister who negotiated it into trouble: in Council of the New South Wales Bar Association v DKLR [2007] NSWADT 201, NSW’s equivalent of VCAT’s Legal Practice List held the barrister guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct. The settlement purported to settle not only the civil action, but also to dispose at the same time of the complaint. Continue reading “Danger lurks in settling a disciplinary complaint against a lawyer”
Peter Faris’s comments about drugs and the Bar
Update, 10 June 2008: The Bar’s Ethics Committee dropped the investigation without giving reasons.
Update, 23 November: The press just can’t seem to believe that anyone would be called Issac Brott, inevitably reverting to the more plausible Isaac Brott. And nor do they seem to be reading this blog. Here’s The Australian again claiming the Bar is ‘threatening to end the legal career’ of Peter Faris. I am not aware of any such threat.
Update, 13 November: I suggested below that if there is to be a debate it should be about the merits of the conduct rule they’re wondering if Mr Faris might have broken. It is a close relation of contempt by scandalising the judiciary. Oyiela Litaba’s recent article in the Deakin Law Review may be of interest in that regard: ‘Does the “Offence” of Contempt by Scandalising the Court have a Valid Place in the Law of Modern Day Australia?’ [2003] Deakin LRev 6. I should reiterate that I express no opinion on the question, and I am not sure what my opinion would be if I thought about it properly.
Original post: The Ethics Committee of the Victorian Bar has written to fellow Melbourne law blogger Peter Faris QC who has resigned as a consequence and joined the ranks of solicitors. When colourful Melbourne silk Peter Hayes died this year in circumstances said to have been associated with drugs, Mr Faris made comments on his blog about the prevalence of drugs at the Bar, but he did not name any names. That original post, and this one are still up on his blog. I am not sure whether it is the blog post, or other comments Mr Faris made, which got up the nose of the Ethics Committee. The Bar insisted on knowing the names, and when none were forthcoming, it wrote to advise him it was considering writing to the Legal Services Commissioner.
Two things interest me about the whole affair, the substance of which I do not propose to comment on. First, I think the free speech discussion could get a bit more sophisticated. That would involve a focus on the rule which prohibits conduct which would bring the profession into disrepute. Seems to me a debate about whether that is a good rule would be a much more fruitful one than anything presently being tossed around by commentators. Secondly, there is a misunderstanding about what role the Ethics Committee is playing. Being the pedant that I am, I point it out for the benefit of the newspapers. Continue reading “Peter Faris’s comments about drugs and the Bar”
Barristers and the media
Generally speaking, lawyers and the media are a subject of ongoing controversy. I felt very uneasy about Schappelle Corby’s barristers turning on her and suggesting that other members of her legal team were paying bribes. It seemed hard to believe that Corby had sanctioned that course. The English Bar Standards Board’s website summarises the situation in England. The relevant Victorian Bar’s rules of conduct are reproduced below. They restrict only comment on cases with which the barrister is directly involved, but there is of course a complex web of other rules and laws which restrict what barristers may say about court cases. Some of them which apply in NSW are enumerated on this page. The Victorian rules say this: Continue reading “Barristers and the media”
Victorian Legal Services Commissioner’s 2006-2007 annual report
The Legal Services Commissioner’s annual report went online today. You can download the pdf by clicking here. The big news is that she’s put 2 new blokes on the staff, but the blokes to sheila ratio has actually decreased (to 1 in 20).
In the year to 30 June 2007, the Commissioner’s staff of 45 (including 6 part-timers) closed 2550 files. At the end of the disciplinary complaint process, the Commissioner has to decide whether the complaint is made out, unless it was summarily dismissed earlier. The test is whether VCAT would be reasonably likely to find a practitioner guilty of professional misconduct or unsatisfactory professional conduct. 5,089 enquiries gave rise to 1,487 disciplinary complaints, yielding a single instance where the Commissioner thought it was reasonably likely that VCAT would find the practitioner guilty of misconduct, and that was the matter reported in my previous post in which the barrister made a full confession from the outset of the investigation. The three other misconduct prosecutions were for failure to cooperate with the Commissioner’s investigations.
The 1,487 disciplinary complaints also yielded 64 instances where the Commissioner thought it was reasonably likely that VCAT would find the practitioner guilty of the lesser disciplinary offence of unsatisfactory conduct. She has a discretion whether to prosecute in these instances. She exercised that discretion in favour of laying charges just once, when some scamp attempted to charge for storage or retrieval of documents without a written agreement by the client. So 2 charges were laid as a result of the 5,089 enquiries. Additionally, 3 charges were laid because of non-cooperation with investigations. And 28 slaps over the wrist were privately inflicted in the form of reprimands and cautions. So: pity the professional discipline Bar, all hail to an unprecedentedly well behaved profession, and shame on the great unwashed for making all those hurtful allegations which went nowhere and cost the revenue $7 million. Continue reading “Victorian Legal Services Commissioner’s 2006-2007 annual report”
Withdrawing complaints under the Legal Profession Act, 2004
In the Victorian Legal Services Commissioner’s 2006-2007 annual report, she makes the following points about withdrawing complaints under the Legal Profession Act, 2004:
- civil complaints and disciplinary complaints alike may be withdrawn;
- if a civil complaint which is characterised as a costs dispute is withdrawn, any costs paid into trust at the outset must be paid to the lawyer;
- if a disciplinary complaint is withdrawn, the Commissioner may nonetheless continue to investigate the conduct of the lawyer.
Barrister who signed as witness to pay $10,000
A barrister purported to witness the signature of a wife on a guarantee at the request of his good friend the husband. But he did not witness her signature. Worse, he certified that he had explained the document to her and that she had appeared to understand it. A familiar story. As it happens, the wife suffered no loss, but she says that though she signed the guarantee, she did so under duress. Unbeknownst to the barrister, the couple’s relationship was heading for the Family Court.
The barrister cooperated fully from the outset and admitted his wrongdoing, but the investigation and hearing of the plea still ran up costs of over $5,000. The case is Legal Services Commissioner v MPRT [2007] VCAT 1986, not yet available on the web. The prosecutrix did not submit that suspension was appropriate. The barrister was reprimanded, fined $5,000 with a stay of 3 months, and ordered to pay the Commissioner’s costs